How banks worked around year 1500 or so?
Been playing Assassin’s Creed recently and had a thought. How actually banks worked back then?
I mean a guy could show up and ask for a loan. Let’s say he wants 1000 for a week. All goes well -> the guy returns money with interest. But the other outcome is – the guy decides to move to another city or simply don’t go to the bank. How the bank would get its money back, considering that there were a lot less documents and such for each person? Probably some of them didn’t have an ID or some kind of an equivalent.
Wife suggested that bank didn’t have out loans to poor people at all because was impossible to know whether the guy returns money or not.
In: Economics
Actually the first form of banks were more closely related to a money exchange than of what we have now, as in, they were made by the crusaders in which the pilgrims would give them money and would receive a tablet for the city that they were going to. Of course it would have a fee and the crusaders would exchange contacts regularly about the logistics of it all… The crusades and merchant expeditions were the first credits and loans performed by the crusaders, but that was much later (1400) and the first form of it was more like in the 700-900 as they wanted to primarily protect the christian pilgrims money
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